Caverna
by 13's Number 14
Summary: Megaman X.  The name was simple enough. "Huge building in the middle of nowhere" was an easy target for Maverick suspicion. But as the Big Three are sent to investigate, they find that all is not as it seems...


**Megaman X - Caverna**

**(A/N): **_Name will be changed when I find a better one._

_Sooo...didn't expect me to write a fic about Megaman, did'ja? Well, lucky for you, it's a long story that I won't bother explaining because I know you just wanna get to the story, right? So here, the bare facts;_

_This takes place I believe...after X8, because I'm not sure what happens in Command Mission. Disregarding all the personality and armor changes, I stuck to the absolute minimum of the characters' personas in order to really get each and every characters' personality right and make sure they weren't too wordy. It was long and tedious working and editing this and I fear my facts may be a little outdated, so please ,corrections and criticism are appreciated, but no absolute flames. _

_So, without further holdup, I, 13snumber14, cheesily present: __**Caverna!**_

Three beams of light cascaded from the sky and landed onto the barren ground below. As they subsided, the travelers within them stepped onto their new environment, blinking in the sun as they took it in. The first one stepped forward and surveyed the gargantuan rusted building in front of them, which seemed to loom over everything else but the bright morning sun. The two beside him looked everywhere else, eyeing the otherwise totaled surroundings and rubble that contrasted with the behemoth in front. It wasn't anything new, seeing as how almost everything outside of their home city was destroyed by either the Mavericks or Sigma Virus, but even here, an untouched building amidst wreckage was at the very least a little odd.

The first bot finished his inspection and raised a hand to his blue helmet, hailing the other line of eager Reploids waiting for his call back at Hunter Base.

"This is X. We've made it to the starting point. Starting reconnaissance mission now."

"Be careful, X. Though it may look barren, we've just pinpointed several Maverick energy signals in the area." A female voice answered back, "And they're very high readings. That means not only will you be doing reconnaissance in and around that building, but trying to eliminate the Maverick threat as well. This goes for you too, Zero and Axl. Make sure you have enough Retry Chips, your weapons are charged, and if you need to get back for any reason..." The navigator at base went off on her usual preparatory lecture on caution in a new area as if it were routine, which it was. The bot to X's immediate right sighed quietly to himself and crossed his arms as he listened out of sheer politeness, while the other bot- now safe to be called a Reploid-to X's left audibly groaned and fumbled with the volume control on the side of his helmet.

"Come on Alia, we've been through this so many times before. We goooot iiiit..." The Reploid stressed the last two words into a whine as he ran a hand through his spiked auburn hair in an impatient childish fashion, which caused his two partners to sigh to themselves again and wonder just who programmed this kid to have the attention span of a sparrow. Alia, on the other hand, continued even though she heard his cry over the line, only abridging it at the last second as to not waste anymore time, "In other words...just keep each other safe and don't waste your items, OK?"

"OK. Thanks Alia. Keep us posted." X replied before ending the call. He huffed to himself as the bot to his right walked up to his side, also giving the building a quick look.

"So, X. What do you think's in here?" He asked, crossing his arms once more.

"I dunno, Zero..." X looked at him. That same look of mixture between determination and doubt he always had when starting a mission crossed his face and contrasted with the other's forever calm-and-collected facade looking back, "it might just be another Maverick hideout, or an illegal production facility or... something." X's eyes looked down in search of an answer, and, finding none, eased when the third bot, Axl, interrupted.

"Come on X, don't you ever think it might be something different?" Axl's young sense of adventure and optimism never ceased to amaze X, even during any mission the three have had, from Sigma's final stand to Lumine's, and even past the frequent hospital visits the kid had to make the months after to get his head checked. It kind of reminded him of himself, in some off-key version of his past...

The auburn looked at him. "Helloooo...? X do you read me?" He jokingly reached out and tapped the back of X's helmet, which caused the blue one to snap out of his subliminal state and look up in surprise. Axl chuckled a bit, then joined his partners up front, "Sooo, any chance we'll be doing anything soon, or are we gonna sit here looking at this thing for the next few hours?"

Zero began "Aside from the destruction outside, the damage is too old for any Mavericks still living here. They must've moved on or died, or..."

"...maybe taken residence inside that building." X finished. "Seems fitting enough that one boss would live there, but a few? Alia did tell us that several high-leveled Mavericks were here, but Mavericks don't work together."

"So check it out then?" Axl gestured forward and smirked cheekily, trying ever-so-much to just get inside the dang building.

X shrugged. "Guess so."

"Yes!" Axl fist-pumped and excitedly followed the two as they made their way to the front door, which seemingly increased in size twofold as they went up to it.

X reached for the handle and tried it, only to have it stop an inch down and not budge. X reset it and tried again, but the handle just broke off from the pressure into his hand, which earned an small audible groan to escape from his lips.

"No windows, no other entrances, and the front door won't even open. Alright, step back..." Zero motioned him out of the way and stepped up to it, analyzing it for a second, then pulled out his Z-Saber and proceeded to slice the door with an 'X' shape and side-kicked it in. The result was not only that it opened, but the door practically blasted into chunks, taking its heavy self and pieces of the wall with it to loud metal 'clunks' on the floor. Their sound reverberated in the cavernous inside, as Zero could hear when he poked his head in seconds later, saber still drawn in case. X and Axl readied themselves as Zero stepped in, analyzing as much of his dark surroundings as much as he could, but to no avail. The air was stagnant and smelly, and most of his vision was clouded by the darkness that resided within, were it not for the newly-opened door's light shining in. Even still, as his partners joined him, they could only see a few feet ahead of themselves, the only light sources being the door they slowly moved away from, Zero's Saber, and their glowing head gems, each casting a different shade of color as the traveling rave lights made their way to what they thought was the center of the room.

X's foot stopped on a small stationary object and tripped, causing X to let out a yelp and fall. His comrades both jumped at his cry, the auburn turning and aiming his twin pistols directly in front of X, and the blonde, seeing Axl's reaction, brought his saber near X to help illuminate the bot.

"What happened?" Zero asked. X looked down at himself to see his foot still caught behind the small box-looking object that, from the looks of it, was built into the floor. He moved his foot and scooted to it, staring intensely at it to try to figure out what it was.

"I tripped on this thing. I can't...I can't see it very well. Could you...?" He beckoned Zero to move his saber closer, and X saw what he hoped it would be when he did.

"An outlet!" He looked up at Zero. "You know what this means?"

"That there's a generator somewhere...?" Zero slowly answered, not entirely sure where X was going with this.

"Yeah. It'll probably be in a basement somewhere, or in a..."

"Hey guys! I think I found it!" Axl called from afar. X and Zero both jumped again and looked around, only spotting the kid because of his blue head gem. Axl was apparently twenty or so feet away and had found the wall, squinting as he brought his face and the light on his head closer to the door. "Yeah, it has a picture of a little lightning bolt on it. That's gotta be the generator room!" Axl took a step back and swung his leg in a spinning back-kick towards the door, which with unnecessary force swung it open and thudded to its opposing wall. Axl ran inside, feeling his way in until his hand rested on a coil-like object. He ran back outside, where X was just getting up, with an unnoticed grin on his face, "It's a straight shot from here, X! If you shoot it, we can light the place up!"

"Yeah X, shoot that generator." Zero smirked at X, who from his look instantly knew what he was referring to. X frowned at him as he prepared his cannon and took aim.

Zero jumped back a few feet and called, with a remarkably good impression of Chill Penguin, "THE GENERATOR! SHOOT THE GENERATOR X!" X grunted, resisting the urge to fire a warning shot at him, but instead used that to charge and fire. The familiar blue blast rocketed past Axl and hit the generator dead-on, startling the machine to life with a huge humming sound. A few seconds later and hundreds of clicks could be heard as the electricity was restored to the building's mechanisms, and above all, the lights overhead came to life, bringing dim but much-needed illumination to the room and its now-rejoicing visitors.

X and Zero bro-fisted while Axl ran over to them, the nonapparent grin on his face was now as clear as the outside sky. A second later and they, still smiling, went back to work, scanning the place up and down for any signs of a still-residing Maverick.

The building was as decrepit as the outside, however, a lot more complicated than they thought it was since the first glance around told them that they weren't in a huge assembly hall that they all, admittedly, thought, but in a medium-sized hallway. Rust dotted what once was grey walls that were painted over its metal, and the outlet X had tripped on was revealed to have brothers lining the walls, which they were near. The very front split off into a door-lined U-shaped fork, with a desk sitting right in the middle, obviously for a receptionist, while the outlets were used for other things, such as an old vending machine with all the drink choices torn out, sitting in the back corner.

"Now that's what I'm talkin' about!" Axl jogged to it and dug in his pocket for any money he could find and deposited it into the machine. It whirred, thudded something in the back, then deposited something into Axl's waiting hand in the slot. Axl pulled it back, and immediately fell with disappointment as he saw that a lumpy rock had been given to him.

"Wh-a rock? What a ripoff! Nyah!" At "Nyah" he blindly pitched the rock, which sailed past Zero's head and collided with the door to the immediate right of the receptionist's desk, and surprisingly opened it.

Zero lost his cool for a moment. "You almost hit my face! What is wrong with you?"

"I just got a rock from a drink machine! A DRINK MACHINE, Zero! Do you not see _anything_ wrong with that?" Axl gestured from the vending machine to himself wildly.

"Yeah, but that doesn't give you an excuse to-

"Guys, look." X interrupted. He pointed at the newly opened door, "Axl just opened a door for us. Let's head through it."

Zero huffed, turned and followed X to the door, while Axl 'hmph'ed and made a pouty pose before leaving the hacked vending machine. Along the way he scooped up the rock, feeling the need to at least carry it around to justify its purchase.

X opened the door fully, revealing an even dimmer hallway lined with closed doors, each marked with some kind of occupation, such as "FINANCE" and "QUALITY DEPT.". The hallway itself ran long, _very_ long, until it abruptly ended with bare wall, presumably at the end of the building or to make room for another hall. Raising an "eyebrow", X stepped into the corridor, followed closely by the other two hunters, who immediately after began scouting the place.

Axl broke the fifteen-second period of silence and scoping first with "Alright, mission accomplished. There's nothing here but doors and hallways. What a rip."

"No no no, something's not right. These doors...they're fake." Zero replied. He tried the handles of two parallel doors, only to find that they felt more 'sealed' than locked. Taking another one in his grip, he wrenched in its supposed direction so much that the weak structure of the handle itself broke off. Zero looked at the broken bit and felt it; it wasn't metal like normal handles, more like filler, or _cement_.

X went up to a door marked "RESOURCES" and put his earpiece to it and knocked. True enough, it didn't clank like metal at all, but thudded like sound-impenetrable rock. He checked the three doors adjacent to it, only finding the dull thuds again and again. Axl walked ahead, scraping every handle with the tips of his fingers till he'd almost gotten pretty far down the hallway, a good 75 feet in front of his comrades, until he felt his hand press down. He looked back to where his hand was resting and saw that there was, in fact, a real door in this freaky faked hall.

"Guys!" Axl called while jarring the handle, and the two looked up and ran over to see what he had found. X reached him first, surveying the door and its apparently torn-off sign.

"Huh. An actual door amidst these fakes. Good job, Axl."

"Heheh!" Axl grinned that childish grin of his as he took the compliment. Zero finally caught up with them, having implied the same technique Axl used to check the doors on the other side and found nothing. X pushed open the door, revealing an office still equipped with the staples; a desk, two chairs, a picture of a forest, and even a fossilized plant still in its pot in the corner. The paint on the walls was slightly darker than the hallways, resembling Axl's upper arm and leg color. In the back was another door, unmarked, beckoning the trio with its mystery.

Zero walked up to the door this time and opened it, showing, to their surprise, an identical hallway. The room now of the least importance, they exited and started checking the doors again. As X discovered, the real door wasn't in the same place as the previous door, but in fact, further in the direction they just came from. However, he also noted that this hallway didn't have a door at the end anymore, meaning the only way any employee could exit was to go through this series of fake hallways, find the real door, and proceed around the girth of the building. "_How weird..._" he thought to himself, "_who would work in a place as confusing as this?_"

The trio proceeded through that door to find another office, with an even darker paint job, and as a mirrored version of its predecessor. Another door at the end was to be opened by Axl, who sweatdropped when he saw that it lead to-surprise, surprise-another hallway.

Axl stepped back and sunk into the chair opposite the desk, pulling out one of his pistols, "This is nuts, man. Why can't we just _blast_ the doors open? Would save us a lot of time..."

The communicator suddenly rang. Alia's voice crossed their helmets, even quieter than before, "Because, as our progressive scan shows, the walls are office-thick as well as reinforced. Trying to break down a fake door with any weapon would ricochet back at you."

Axl, having been totally shot down, pouted again. X continued the call, "Alia, is everything alright? The communicator is a lot quieter..."

"Hm? Oh. I'm sorry, but this territory is as unexplored as well as it is tricky. Right now we can only see what you've been past, and as you head deeper into the building...well, the signal just gets worse and worse. Eventually, I won't be able to reach you completely."

"Have you figured out anything? A pattern or something that'll get us through quickly?"

"I don't know. But they all have to be leading _somewhere_. Eventually the hallways will get smaller as they come to the center of the building, which means..."

"Someone - or something - is probably hiding in the center." Zero finished, "Or maybe even _waiting_. For _us_." Axl shuddered at Zero's successful attempt to be dramatic, at which the crimson bot slightly smirked.

A few more moments, and X finally spoke up, "Well, guess we won't find out 'till we get there, huh?"

"Right." Zero acknowledged, lifting himself off the wall. Axl grudgingly got out of his comfy chair and stood, even adding a loud yawn as he stretched to garner narrowed looks from his comrades before proceeding. If there was anything to spend a perfectly good morning on, it certainly wasn't chasing confusing maze offices through a giant factory.

Axl was the last to join his comrades as they split off north and south to check the doors. This routine repeated and devoured time, the three checking and going through door after door, hall after hall, office after ever-darkening office. One could feel the heroes' morale slipping with each level they passed, as if it were tangible...and spreading...

By the twentieth hallway or so-Zero had stopped counting-the hallways had shrunk from the dozens of doors at the beginning to only three. Each droid took a handle and, nodding, simultaneously turned it, with the winner being the middle; Zero's. This was the first door out of twenty-or-so to feature a real door in the middle, so small pockets of hope began to build in the hunters' logic chips as they silently wished that this was the last. They were rewarded with an office, unnerving the trio with its pitch-black walls.

The small light here was no help, the paint's darkness still shrouded the room. The door at the end, for all its elusivity, posed even greater suspicion to our heroes as this one was painted stark white, with a faded sign at the end reading "MAIN OFFICE".

The two senior hunters looked at each other, knowing from experience what usually lied behind mysterious doors like this. However, as the younger one walked in and caught sight of it, he immediately brightened, eager to give whoever's responsible for building this place a piece of his mind.

"FINALLY!" Axl cried, charging toward the door at full speed, "This Maverick's gonna pay for making this dungeon so asinidingly long!"

"Axl, no!" X ran in front of the Reploid in an attempt to stop him, which failed, and the blue bomber was included into Axl's battering ram. The door bashed the opposite wall as the decrease in resistance caused Axl to tumble over X, the latter hitting the floor and the former slipping into the-

"Pit!" The bomber looked back over to see that he was very lucky where he had fallen; the floor in the other room was nonexistent. His arm trailed over the two-inch ledge that simply dropped off into pitch-black void below, never revealing what was below or if it even _had_ a "below". Concerned about neither, X righted himself and looked into it, hoping and praying that his teammate hadn't become one of its victims.

"...Axl! Axl can you hear me?"

"Heheh, what dude?" Axl's voice responded. X looked back up to the source to find the Reploid hovering over the chasm, sporting his sly smile again as his relieved comrade abruptly sighed and stood up.

"Oh man, don't scare me like that..." X wiped his "brow" and looked around at the room around the pit. The room itself was slightly bigger than the offices but sported the usual ugly grey that accompanied the outer levels of the building. Two small rectangular lights adorned the walls on each side, really bringing out the floor's abysmal feeling.

The auburn sighed internally. _Lucky I have these boosters, _he thought,_ I'd be dead or wherever this pit'll take me if I didn't have 'em..._

"So X, what's the plan now?" Axl asked, pushing the thought of near-death past him.

X glanced at Zero, who looked slightly less relieved, then brought a hand to his chin.

"Well, it seems like we've reached the end of the maze here. Either the Maverick or a huge trap is at the bottom of that pit, so we might as well pack it in and head back. Alia probably has a complete scan for us so we can send an exploration team down there..."

Axl and Zero chuckled.

X would have given them a hard look, were it not clouded with confusion as the ground abruptly shook, knocking the two grounded bots off balance. Zero was the first to stand up, sword in hand, as he scanned the place for any oncoming Maverick. X stood up a few seconds later, only to fall back down again as a piercing noise bursted its way through the corridors of the building, collectively making each hunter cover his ears and shout in pain. It writhed its way to the final room where it tortured its resident for a few seconds before finally dissipating.

X, still feeling the horrid noise reverberate in his skull, hopped to his feet quicker than Zero this time and glanced at Axl. The young Reploid still had his ears covered even though it was gone, but heard a new noise accompanying the round. He slowly looked up at X, who met his glance for a half second before the younger's eyes widened in terror.

Axl had neglected the remaining fuel in his boosters. The new beeping sound in his head was the warning.

And now he was falling into the abyss below.

"Axl!" X shouted. A fraction of a second later Zero dashed in, bravely jumping to the middle of the room and reaching for the Reploid. Gravity, however, was the faster contender, and Axl fell into the obscured darkness a foot before Zero was able to catch him. Zero twisted mid-air and unsheathed his saber again, thrusting it into the nearest wall. He stopped himself just inches before the dropoff, garnering X's help back up quickly before his weight dragged him down as well.

The two hunters leaned nervously over the edge, waiting for the horrid "CRASH!" of a bot falling to his death to come. 5 seconds...10 seconds...20 seconds went by, and the sound never came. A minute. 3 minutes. Not a single resonance came to the bots' sensors. They glanced at each other with visible uneasiness. Either the pit was far too deep for them to fathom, something had swooped in and saved and/or captured the 'ploid, or maybe...just maybe...

"Come in Alia, this is X. Axl..." The bomber paused, unable to find the correct term to describe what just happened, "Axl has fallen into the Maverick's trap. We need a Search and Rescue team here to help us get to him. We'll regroup outdoors at-"

The ground shook again with a fierceness, interrupting the transmission. X and Zero grabbed the nearest door side and hung on for dear life, but the attempt to resist was futile.

A literal "wave" of earth swept the corridor, garnering horrified looks from the duo as it rapidly neared, collapsing the door entirely and throwing them off the ground and into the pit. As luck would have it, Zero was thrown the farthest, his head colliding dead-on with the previously unreachable opposite wall, knocking him unconscious.

X was the only one to scream as they plummeted into the darkness.

_And so ends the first chapter, on a more or less serious note. Ugh. Anybody think they can find the hidden reference? It's to another Megaman game, don't worry._

_..._

_Done? Good. Now review, fave this story and watch it closely. I'll be updating soon._

_See ya's next chapter!_

_~13_


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